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Thousands of Videogame-Playing Soldiers Could Shape the Future of War (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Atlantic:
As far as video games go, Operation Overmatch is rather unremarkable. Players command military vehicles in eight-on-eight matches against the backdrop of rendered cityscapes -- a common setup of games that sometimes have the added advantage of hundreds of millions of dollars in development budgets. Overmatch does have something unique, though: its mission. The game's developers believe it will change how the U.S. Army fights wars. Overmatch's players are nearly all soldiers in real life. As they develop tactics around futuristic weapons and use them in digital battle against peers, the game monitors their actions.
Each shot fired and decision made, in addition to messages the players write in private forums, is a bit of information soaked up with a frequency not found in actual combat, or even in high-powered simulations without a wide network of players. The data is logged, sorted, and then analyzed, using insights from sports and commercial video games. Overmatch's team hopes this data will inform the Army's decisions about which technologies to purchase and how to develop tactics using them, all with the aim of building a more forward-thinking, prepared force... While the game currently has about 1,000 players recruited by word of mouth and outreach from the Overmatch team, the developers eventually want to involve tens of thousands of soldiers. This milestone would allow for millions of hours of game play per year, according to project estimates, enough to generate rigorous data sets and test hypotheses.
Each shot fired and decision made, in addition to messages the players write in private forums, is a bit of information soaked up with a frequency not found in actual combat, or even in high-powered simulations without a wide network of players. The data is logged, sorted, and then analyzed, using insights from sports and commercial video games. Overmatch's team hopes this data will inform the Army's decisions about which technologies to purchase and how to develop tactics using them, all with the aim of building a more forward-thinking, prepared force... While the game currently has about 1,000 players recruited by word of mouth and outreach from the Overmatch team, the developers eventually want to involve tens of thousands of soldiers. This milestone would allow for millions of hours of game play per year, according to project estimates, enough to generate rigorous data sets and test hypotheses.
I wish there was a game, that did the oppisite of traditional shooters: Not show any of the "fun" of serial murder, but show all of the pain and suffering caused.
Semi-dead people, bleeding like pigs, begging like children to save them. The horrible screams. So much blood and torn flesh. Your closest pals with everything below the hip ripped off. Children running screaming through the street. People snapping and getting crazy. Having to look everyone and their relatives in the face! Flashbacks for decades.
Or just huddling in a half-bombed building, with snipers everywhere around, and no bullets or radio left, deciding whether to starve to death or run into certain death.
It should be illegal, to show something without its real consequences. These kids have no fuckin clue what awaits them if real combat happens. So in a way, making such a game, is at least partially responsible for their deaths and the deaths of those they murder. It is not so much better than that 70 virgins in heaven fairy tale, is it?
The Future of War should be an absence of it. Greed will never allow that to happen.
We pretend replacing humans with bots on a 21st century battlefield is "progress". It's not. We've won a battle, but we're still waging war for profits sake.
I suppose you can only die once in the game and never play again in your life, otherwise their behavioural data would be worthless.
Brings to mind the scene from Arrested Development where one of the characters realizes he's been piloting drones and bombing actual people not playing a video game as he'd thought. Which I guess was just a play on Ender's Game...
Thousands of Videogame-Playing Soldiers Could Shape the Future of War
There was a LOT of discussion about the "Nintendo Warriors" and the precision ordnance guided by soldiers with years of training in their parents' basements. Operation Desert Strike, and then later Desert Storm.
[
Are we finally reaching "Enders Game" age? Or have we already?
...apparently, there's a boy named Ender who is really good at this sort of thing....
But can the generals adjust their doctrine for AFK, LeeRoy Jenkins, and Rage Quit?
Boot Camp will now include an entire day devoted to learning how to teabag corpses.
falken's maze
black jack
gin rummy
hearts
bridge
checkers
chess
poker
fighter combat
guerrilla engagement
desert warfare
air-to-ground actions
theaterwide tactical warfare
theaterwide biotoxic and chemical warfare
global thermonuclear war
They also should recruit former soldiers who play video games, who have been in combat and have a sense how things work.
You'd get people who'd would try crazy stuff like.....
spoke of how an early effort of his to attach a gun to an unmanned ground vehicle was declined because if the gun were fired, it would flip the vehicle over.
It's a simulation, let them try it. The soldier already know chances are good it will flip but maybe not if the weapon is restricted to specific degrees over the front or rear of the vehicle. Just like the A-10. They just figured out to shoot that thing in short bursts to not drop it from the sky - i.e. don't do that!
Also a major problem in my opinion for combat soldiers in the military isn't when they are out in the field doing their job it's when they aren't and they are dealing with the politics / drama of being in the barracks. Make this open and available to as many as possible as much as possible to keep them occupied. Heck I would have been in the simulators we had every spare moment if they would have let me. That was a rare event though and it offered a lot of training time.
The only desirable future for war is its complete extinction - not this. We still have SO much to learn as a species.
Unfortunately, while I agree with the sentiment that we should always search for a solution without war, people are dumb and selfish, so we will have conflict. What I enjoy with this idea is that the real soldiers who are putting their lives on the line are the ones who get to work the simulator and make notes. They get to have some input on what they think should be happening or they could be asked to do, regarding tactics or weapons. Now maybe in the end, someone will say 'nope' and ignore it all, or maybe half of it will be dropped because the strategy doesn't scale, but I appreciate that they can at least have some say in the process.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
The data is logged, sorted, and then analyzed, using insights from sports and commercial video games. Overmatch's team hopes this data will inform the Army's decisions about which technologies to purchase and how to develop tactics using them, all with the aim of building a more forward-thinking, prepared force...
We have analyzed the data from over 2.4M games and the results are clear - we need:
1) wall hacks
2) aim bots
And
3)185k cases of RedBull
There is no respawn
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Bradley Trainer: Atari’s Top Secret Military Project
https://www.google.com/amp/s/arcadeblogger.com/2016/10/28/bradley-trainer-ataris-top-secret-military-project/amp/
I thought they had already done this many years ago with www.americasarmy.com (the "official" game of the US Army). Even years ago, I remember that game devolved into basically folks memorizing the angles to point a rifle augmented with grenade launcher such that you'd hit through windows or the start point. Do these kinds of tactics work in real life? No. Also, there's no civilians on any of the battlefields.. Just a recruitment tool "Hey kid! You like killing people in video games? What if you could do that for a living?"
Already a few hundred paid soldiers fought and won an election.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The problem is that this form of combat doesn't accurately simulate physical and mental fatigue, nor does it carry the same potential cost as a real firefight (death, injury, psychological trauma). The result? Soldiers will behave in a completely different manner than they would in reality.
Overmatch's team hopes this data will inform the Army's decisions about which technologies to purchase and how to develop tactics using them
As German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke noted “No battle plan, survives contact with the enemy.” [ Wiki ]
And this sort of "strategy" seems to make the basic error: that the enemy is playing by the same rules, or has had the same training that these soldiers - on either side - are employing.
I fear this will go badly and catastrophically wrong. Probably the first time it's tried.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Last time I checked the USA is pretty much "keeping its guard up". They're probably the leading cause of death in quite a few areas of the planet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What should we do about it?
Saying that anyone playing a MilSim would gladly go out and shoot everyone in sight is bullshit. There is a huge difference between treating a virtual "wounded soldier" and a person that got really hit by enemy fire.
One of them make you puke the first time you do it. I leave it to your imagination which one it might be.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Like the US you mean?
Wait, I'm being told they aren't a democracy but a Republic. Carry on...
While games like BattleZone and America's Army are among many attempts by the armed forces to make use of publicly available gaming engines, this is different. Battlezone may have never even seen the light of day for training use and would only have given the most tertiary data points.
The difference here, and why it is something new, despite your out of hand dismissal, is how they are collecting data from the players and how they are hoping to use it. This isn't to train soldiers, but to understand where warfare will go in the future.
Lords of the New Church - Open Your Eyes (1982) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Is Operation Overmatch a Kapersky product ?
Nullius in verba
Fear and pain. And the combination, being afraid to die after catching a bullet.
Real life combat is not a milsim. One is business, the other is fun. And you notice the difference VERY quickly. No matter how "professional" you want to pull it off. People are WAY braver and WAY more collected when their ass isn't on the line.
People who get shot scream. That's maybe the worst thing missing here, and you cannot simulate this. Yes, you can make the character model scream, but who gives a fuck about some generic voice acted scream? Hearing the scream of pain and fear in the voice of your buddy is what breaks it. And you can't fake that, nobody is that good an actor. People who get shot in a milsim are not afraid that they are going to die. They might die, all right, in the sim. Who gives a shit about dying in a sim? People who get shot and survive that shot are going to scream. No matter how brave they are on the outside. Everyone screams. And everyone is afraid of dying.
And that affects you.
You cannot simulate this. But I guess if you could, people would probably quit that line of work in greater numbers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Despite the apparent misconception, "Republic" and "Democracy" are not mutually exclusive. You can, in fact, have a democratic republic.
(although most of the states with the phrase "democratic republic" in their official name put those words in to hide the fact that they were actually neither).
Some links: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/13/is-the-united-states-of-america-a-republic-or-a-democracy/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/republic
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
But I agree with you that adding robots into the battlefield is not progress, but for different reasons I think. When you take away the human cost of war, you take away the political cost as well.
Bingo! I have long said that the concept of robot warfare isn't going to work in the end because we aren't killing people. Humas have a deep seated need to kill other humans.
I'll disagree with you on that one. The purpose of war is for one group to force their will on another (and the converse, to prevent another group from forcing their will on them.) That might be: to take their stuff, to take their land, to control their politics, or whatever. Killing people just happens to be a very good way to do that: if you kill all the other people who can fight back, you can impose your will without opposition.
But killing people isn't the objective, it is merely a tool to accomplish the objective. If you could accomplish the objective with a better tool-- well, then the people with the better tool would impose their will on the people without the better tool.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Last time I checked the USA is pretty much "keeping its guard up". They're probably the leading cause of death in quite a few areas of the planet.
Yep, as it turns out, America has a larger defense budget than the next eight nations combined. "Keeping its guard up" is, in fact, what we spend the largest part of our taxes on. (Along with paying for the debt we accrued from building and equipping that army in the past.)
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/how-us-defense-spending-stacks-up-against-the-rest-of-the-world.html
They're probably the leading cause of death in quite a few areas of the planet.
No, not even close. Heart disease and stroke are still number one and two. http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Our resources aren't infinite.
Humanity grows exponentially.
It's worth pointing out that the second assumption is an assumption, not a law of nature.
Demographers have long proven that three things lead to lower population growth: 1. A wealthier population, 2. A more educated population, and 3. Access to birth control (not forced birth control! It turns out that merely giving people access to the means to limit number of children is enough to have an effect on reducing average family size.)
So, if you want humanity to not increase exponentially until it reaches a (inevitable) crash, work on three things: make all people wealthier, make them more educated, and give them control over their own reproduction.
You have your task. Now, get to work!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Instead of planting landmines, plant sensors? LOTS of 'em? Maybe the true advantage of embedding computer simulation in real world battle wouldn't be improving military control and tactics as much as maximizing sensor data and finally *lifting* the fog of war.
Let's call the policy of planting billions of sensors everywhere 'BoSE'. In embattled settings, police and peacemaker orgs would willingly adopt BoSE as the ideal way to minimize the element of surprise, both during battle, as well as when preparing for it, like when observing those who plant IEDs.
Better yet, the presence of the *jillions* of BoSE sensors in urban settings would also enable persistent, independent, and global oversight of (esp. urban) violence, allowing independent monitors and courts to reconstruct the details of past events from the gobs of redundant sensor info. This unbiased evidence would be invaluable toward imparting real accountability on all actors in war. All actors would find it much harder to misbehave if crystal clear evidence of who did what when were available to all, and thus inescapable.
It's almost as if I knew all that, and was pointing out that being a democracy doesn't seem to have stopped the US from being in a constant state of war. Plenty of other democracies were quite willing to tag along also.
Some of us have been here before, a somewhat-long time ago-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you want to get good at fighting, you must practice fighting. Even if it means "lasertag with tanks" that cost $1000 per mile and planes that cost $5000 per hour to operate.
Playing games leads to good game strategy but not good fighting.
(-I'm not generally an advocate of war, it would be real nice if humans could stop killing each other--at least in massive amounts... but I think we're still quite some time from that goal, and in the mean time I'd rather win than lose-)
It's almost as if I knew all that, and was pointing out that being a democracy doesn't seem to have stopped the US from being in a constant state of war. Plenty of other democracies were quite willing to tag along also.
It is usually hard to tell real ignorance from faked ignorance on slashdot, but, when in doubt, I just assume that people actually are ignorant; it's usually a good bet. It hardly matters: half of the readers will read your post assuming that you mean what you say, and not the opposite of what you say, so it's worth correcting for that fraction of readers.
https://medium.com/@lessig/the-united-states-is-not-a-democracy-it-is-a-republic-54e8036c781c
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
... no, you should NOT look away and censor it yourself! You should look right at it
You would still be missing the smell. The pungent odor of sweaty clothes that haven't been washed in weeks, burnt cordite, smoke and diesel fumes from burning vehicles, and the smell of your hole-mate's entrails: feces from his ruptured colon, the smell of vomit from his stomach, and piss from severed nerves to his urethral sphincter.
Anyone that thinks war is glorious has never smelled a battlefield.
The USA is an oligarchy where the president and congress are nothing but a little puppet show to keep the clueless peasants entertained and bickering, the real power is in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, lobbyists, and the bigwigs at the Pentagon. Nothing the peasants do or say will have any effect on that, elect Trump or Sanders or Batman, it won't matter as they quickly come and go while the same power brokers remain.
Read Butler's "War Is A Racket"and you will see that nothing has changed in the near century since his book was written, simply change the name of the countries involved and the corps calling for the wars and it could have been written in 2017.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
it's a survival game called "This war of mine".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Nothing the peasants do or say will have any effect on that, elect Trump or Sanders or Batman...
"I'm Batman, and I approve this message."
Yep, I'd vote for that. Only question is, should it be Christian Bale's or Will Arnett's voice in the voiceover.
I'll disagree with you on that one. The purpose of war is for one group to force their will on another (and the converse, to prevent another group from forcing their will on them.) That might be: to take their stuff, to take their land, to control their politics, or whatever. Killing people just happens to be a very good way to do that: if you kill all the other people who can fight back, you can impose your will without opposition.
But killing people isn't the objective, it is merely a tool to accomplish the objective. If you could accomplish the objective with a better tool-- well, then the people with the better tool would impose their will on the people without the better tool.
And yet, even aside from wars, the prisons are full of people who kill other people.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Use drones to drop them. Have them report GPS coordinates a few seconds after pressure/weight trigger. They only need to last 3-4 days (situational awareness rather than full time monitoring), they could be the size of a nickel. Maybe have higher power radio transmitters dropped as well that the individual sensors communicate with and proxy info to the command center (makes battery issues much easier to deal with, also resolves distance issues).
Color them to match the locale (so dull yellow for the endless desert operations).
Freaky good idea!
BlameBillCosby.com
It would have to be Bale, after all his Batman could simply sneak into NK and grab fat boy and haul him out of there by balloon to the Haig for trial ;-)
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.